Created by Christine Wilks -a digital writer, artist and developer of interactive narratives and playable media. Before digital media, she made short films, videos, animations, installations and wrote fiction and screenplays. MA in Fine Art from Cardiff Institute of Higher Education; MA in Creative Writing and New Media from De Montfort University. Working on PhD in Digital Writing at Bath Spa University.
-Wilks draws on her own biography as inspiration for this piece. Specifically, the piece attempts to offer insight into the relationship Wilks shared with her mother. Since her mother was a dressmaker, she elects to use this avocation as a metaphor to explore the “imbrications between text and textile”
Dimensions/affordances
-This game was created in Flash, allows player agency/interaction and features animation. After clicking on a “Begin” button, the player is invited to use any one of a collection custom cursors fashioned as dressmaking tools (pins, scissors, picker, sewing device). The idea is to cut pieces of a pattern to reveal text. The memoir/ narrative is revealed when pattern pieces are separated. The piecemeal assembling of text mimics the process by which meaning or patterns are discerned when navigating what the author refers to as “Life’s mysteries.” What is revealed ultimately is a “memoir in pieces.” The player is informed that “you will have read all the fragments of the memoir when all the pattern pieces are dark….” The author retains some control of the pace of how the tools move across the pattern. The player cannot completely force the tools. Sometimes when direction is unclear, a ghost-like hand appears to guide movement when the sewing device tool is used. To get out of the game, the player must close the browser.
Analysis/Interpretation
Visually appealing graphics. The tools/cursors sometimes seemed out of control of the player. Sometimes it was necessary to hover over random parts of the screen to see what would happen (button). Play is pedestrian and sometimes frustratingly slow-moving. Randomly generated sequence of words at the end of the game blends terminology from filmmaking and dressmaking. An animated graphic of dressmaking implements superimposed on film strip also support the author’s theme.
Connection to class discussion/Pedagogy
This game requires a high degree of human agency. This supports the theme of the piece which examines the tactile process of dressmaking. Lesson design based on this piece might reveal how nonlinear construction can lead to a coherent whole. Given adolescents’ preoccupation with fashion, this game is probably useful (in middle school and early grades of high school) in introducing alternative/digital platforms for writing assignments.
Carlton Sykes
- Introduce and situate
Created by Christine Wilks-a digital writer, artist and developer of interactive narratives and playable media. Before digital media, she made short films, videos, animations, installations and wrote fiction and screenplays. MA in Fine Art from Cardiff Institute of Higher Education; MA in Creative Writing and New Media from De Montfort University. Working on PhD in Digital Writing at Bath Spa University.
-Wilks draws on her own biography as inspiration for this piece. Specifically, the piece attempts to offer insight into the relationship Wilks shared with her mother. Since her mother was a dressmaker, she elects to use this avocation as a metaphor to explore the “imbrications between text and textile”
- Dimensions/affordances
-This game was created in Flash, allows player agency/interaction and features animation. After clicking on a “Begin” button, the player is invited to use any one of a collection custom cursors fashioned as dressmaking tools (pins, scissors, picker, sewing device). The idea is to cut pieces of a pattern to reveal text. The memoir/ narrative is revealed when pattern pieces are separated. The piecemeal assembling of text mimics the process by which meaning or patterns are discerned when navigating what the author refers to as “Life’s mysteries.”What is revealed ultimately is a “memoir in pieces.” The player is informed that “you will have read all the fragments of the memoir when all the pattern pieces are dark….”
The author retains some control of the pace of how the tools move across the pattern. The player cannot completely force the tools.
Sometimes when direction is unclear, a ghost-like hand appears to guide movement when the sewing device tool is used.
To get out of the game, the player must close the browser.
- Analysis/Interpretation
Visually appealing graphics. The tools/cursors sometimes seemed out of control of the player. Sometimes it was necessary to hover over random parts of the screen to see what would happen (button). Play is pedestrian and sometimes frustratingly slow-moving.Randomly generated sequence of words at the end of the game blends terminology from filmmaking and dressmaking. An animated graphic of dressmaking implements superimposed on film strip also support the author’s theme.
This game requires a high degree of human agency. This supports the theme of the piece which examines the tactile process of dressmaking. Lesson design based on this piece might reveal how nonlinear construction can lead to a coherent whole. Given adolescents’ preoccupation with fashion, this game is probably useful (in middle school and early grades of high school) in introducing alternative/digital platforms for writing assignments.